Even Brian Clough lasted longer in Leeds than England have. All that remains is for Australia to complete the execution and force the home selectors to consider dropping so many of the Headingley starting XI that they may need to ask Australia to play five-a-side at The Oval.

So much for subtle shifts of plot in this Ashes series. There were meant to be nuances and portents and tiny shifts of narrative, all leading to a tight finale on the ground where England reclaimed the urn four years ago. They can do so again, by winning a one-off confrontation, suspended in space and time, but on the evidence of two traumatic days in Yorkshire you would be wiser to deposit your money in an Allen Stanford fund than push it over a bookie's counter in anticipation of an England series win.

The Ashes are the game's most searching test of each cricketer's ability to add grandeur to his career, to thrive on days of suffocating intensity. The old rivalry's most daunting aspect is also its most attractive, because after five rounds of combat a hand comes down and separates those who answered the call from those who shrank.

Each player sets out hoping to be on the right side of that divide. In six sessions we sped towards the moment when those calculations will be made, for this summer, anyway. Basking on history's better page are Michael Clarke and Marcus North, the Australia batsmen who steered their team to a 343-run first-innings lead, and a gang of Antipodean bowlers who shamed their English counterparts with lethal line and length. Nice of North to drop Matt Prior off the last ball of the day to leave England floundering on 82 for five, still 261 runs short of an innings defeat.

For many of Andrew Strauss's men, the private task is not to finish up where Ravi Bopara is heading after being dismissed for one and then a first-ball duck in a calamitous exhibition of frailty.

Excoriated by Stuart Broad for alleged sloppiness in the field, Bopara has crashed and burned and would be a liability in London on Thursday week. Several of England's first-choicers also risk damnation. Ian Bell (eight and three) looked mentally overwhelmed by Australia's bowling. England's middle-order was nonexistent, collapsing on successive days. In 10 attempts, the five leading batsmen top-scored with Strauss's 32.

In 48 turbulent hours, England have lurched from being one-nil up with two Tests to go to a team who dare aspire no higher than victory-by-massive-underdog. There have been phases in this Test when they have surrendered all credibility as a fighting force. They have been a team of recidivists – mentally soft compared to the relentless self-improvers Ricky Ponting has inspired to shed their no-name image.

When Australia finish England off, two outcomes will keep the urn in Ponting's mitt. A draw or an Australian victory at The Oval will preserve the status quo. England would go to Surrey's home with a much stiffer task than in 2005, when they needed only to share the match to release a tsunami of celebratory fizz.

Retain or regain: which would you bet on? To believe England will need to book Trafalgar Square again (please, no) you would have to dismiss the first six sessions in Leeds as an aberration, a cosmic bad-hair experience, prompted by the loss of Andrew Flintoff and a hotel fire alarm. More to the point, England will have needed to bed down last night believing they are still capable of conquering a side that bowled them out for 102 and then struck 445 before scything down the best English batsmen again, this time for 78 runs.

There is a lot of forgetting and ignoring to be done. And learning. England's bowlers stuck their hand in the fire for two days running, thus demonstrating a curious inability to learn from pain. The evacuation alarm klaxon that sent them on to the street outside their hotel at 4.30am on Friday was still ringing in their souls by the time they saw that Headingley demands precision and tightly marshalled aggression rather than the short-ball machismo that furnished Australia with so many runs.

When the circus chugs south someone in the England camp will pipe up about the Oval Test being like a cup final with all the pressure on Australia. This could only be a smokescreen for the mound of unflattering comparisons between the two teams.

The first says that five Australians have scored seven centuries. Clarke and North have two apiece and there have been tons for Ponting, Brad Haddin and Simon Katich. One Englishman, Strauss, has struck one. With the ball, Mitchell Johnson has regained his mojo, and the returning Stuart Clark has embarrassed Australia's selectors. Clark also spanked three sixes in a handy knock of 32.

England's one case for mitigation is that their best two players were snatched away by injury. A middle order of Bopara, Bell and Collingwood (hardly Best, Law and Charlton) screams out for Kevin Pietersen, however self-absorbed he was at Lord's and in Cardiff. Flintoff's value, beyond the talismanic, is to break partnerships and compel those around him to respond to adversity.

But let's not dwell on absent friends, because Australia might fire back with Gilchrist, McGrath and Warne.